In Age of Impatience, Cutting Computer Start Time — SAN FRANCISCO — It is the black hole of the digital age — the three minutes it can take for your computer to boot up, when there is nothing to do but wait, and wait, and wait some more before you can log on and begin multitasking at hyper-speed.

If No One Sees It, Is It an Invention? — IN December, Johnny Chung Lee, then a Ph.D. candidate, posted a five-minute video on YouTube that became an Internet sensation. — The video showed how, in a few easy steps, the Nintendo Wii remote controller — or “Wiimote” …

YouTube Enables Deep Linking Within Videos — It's not a big new feature but it's certainly one that will come in handy: YouTube will now allow you to send users to a specific point in a video by appending a short tag to the end of a video's URL. It's pretty surprising that this functionality …

Upwardly Mobile — An Indian startup thinks that the right software can make cheap phones a financial lifeline to hundreds of millions. — In Bangalore's Avalahalli neighborhood, a bank account and microloans have transformed the life of 32-year-old Sabira Khanam.

Act Now for Better Internet Access — There's a good chance that on November 4th the FCC'll do something really good to improve Internet and mobile phone access in the US: on that day the Commission is planning on voting on regulations to open huge swatches of idle but extremely valuable radio spectrum for open UNLICENSED use.

A Q&A with Silicon Valley's “Undertaker” — In January of last year, for the San Jose Mercury News, I wrote about 27-year-old Sherwood Partners in Palo Alto, long known to industry insiders as “the undertaker” because its primary role is to efficiently shutter companies.

T-Mobile G1's POP3/IMAP Email Is Down — Over on the T-Mobile forums, there's a massive thread about the G1's totally borked POP3/IMAP email service. Looks like receiving, sending, and even just checking email results in a nasty connection error for just about everyone (one user estimates 95%).